#WE LOVE TO SEE SOME NUANCE.

[rxttenfish]

okay ive been listening to an audiobook of Winterset Hollow and holy FUCK this book is so good. we LOVE to see a horror novel that actually knows how to write some DAMN GOOD CHILDREN'S XENOFICTION that is about colonialism and xenofiction and the glossing over of the past in favor of a polished history told by people who have no authority telling it, and also reminds me VERY acutely of how i write my merfolk in that theres a repeat issue of them not being seen as whole people, people who do not exist for your consumption or to fulfill certain hopes or dreams that you have, people who are viewed as setpieces for someone else's story, their bodies treated as novelties to be gawked at, something which was never human and never will be and thus are seen as something to have and to own, not a whole person. there's what i could only describe as a simply fucking beautiful self harm scene.

GOD WINTERSET HOLLOW IS SO GOOD ALREADY. and very fitting for thanksgiving and provides some excellent anticolonial narrative for the season.

[welcometogrouchland]

[ID in ALT] I've made posts before about Talia/Dick co-parenting Damian moments (will never happen but let me dream) and this came to me in a vision. Took me ages to finish for some reason 😭 and then even longer to post

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Council of lovefools.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[kayanne369]

I genuinely think the main issues with Nandor and Guillermo is that they have completely different types of love language. Nandor isn't a words guys. He's never gonna say "I love you" or "You matter" or anything like that. He's never gonna tell someone how he feels deep down because that's not how he is. He's an actions dude. He holds hands, he protects, he, he jokes, he gives gifts. He sees acts of service as these deep intimate moments. Likewise, words mean very little to him so it doesn't occur to him to say anything because why would he need to. Guillermo, on the other hand is someone who needs words of validation. He needs to hear things, say things. And I think a really nice theme that's been prevalent throughout is their coming to mutually understand one another. To where we're at a point where Nanador is realising that Guillermo NEEDS to hear him say it. He needs him to say "You're super cool. You're a warrior. Fate brought us together. Come home." And Guillermo is realising that grabbing Nandor's hand and looking into his eyes is more intimate for him than anything else. This isn't a slow burn. This is the story of two people realising they've ALWAYS loved one another and I personally think that's really fucking beautiful tbh

[fatedroses]

More than just the Demon.

[i-dreamed-i-had-a-son]

Look I am all for trauma-fueled deeply unhealthy relationships between male leads but I feel compelled to say (with absolutely no malice) that that is not what is happening in Squid Game. In-ho is being deliberately manipulative in every instance in which he interacts with Gi-hun. He doesn't refrain from killing him at the end because he can't bring himself to shoot him, but because the whole point of playing in the games is centered around breaking Gi-hun down mentally. And while In-ho is certainly deeply invested in doing this to Gi-hun, his framing at the end of Episode 7 is intended to serve as a wake-up call: for as nice and understanding as this guy has made himself seem, almost everything we see from him is a lie. He was never going to have a change of heart. To fail to recognize that is to make the same mistake Gi-hun did, but even more willfully since we actually know In-ho is the Frontman. And that's exactly what the show wants us to do!

From the beginning, Gi-hun has served as the audience stand-in. We empathize with him, we root for him, we share his beliefs in the possibility of change. But we are given information he doesn't have; we know that In-ho is the Frontman. And even though we know this, we know this guy is able to shoot his own brother, we want to like him! We want to believe in him, to think that maybe something about Gi-hun or the reality of the games can change his mind! And the show weaponizes this intentionally. Through his character, the show does to us what In-ho himself does to Gi-hun: punishes us for our optimism. It wants us to feel silly for ever believing that In-ho would change, just as In-ho's point is that Gi-hun should have known the games would end the same.

So for as much as I usually love reading doomed yearning into character dynamics, I don't think it works here. In-ho doesn't have any particular love for Gi-hun--the show just wants you to believe he might.

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Don’t Let The Forest In

YA horror

an anxious Australian boy whose only friends are his twin sister & best friend/roommate returns to boarding school in the US - but his sister is ignoring him, and his friend is acting strange, with rumors of having something to do with his parents’ murder

he follows him into the nearby forest one night - and finds him fighting eldritch monsters from the dark fairytales & art they create together, desperate to stop them from hurting anyone else

ace MC, m/m

[gingermintpepper]

Hi!! I don't know if you remember me, but I'm the person you explained the Castalia thing to a few days ago. I've been following you for a while now, but I just managed to go through your blog well and proper, and I'm here to express both my gratitude for the amount of info and links you've shared (I did NOT know about the hepatoscopy and haruspicy, and I'm about to go down a lengthy rabbit hole) and my horror at once again being given a new hyperfixation (I didn't imagine wanting to read about liver-divination help).

Also, also, are you the author of Exeunt Phoebus Apollo on AO3 because that was the fic that sent me on this greek mythology spree, and it's so good I got obsessed with Apollo, and he's everywhere around me now. Thank you for writing it!

AAAAAA THIS IS SO SWEET?? THANK YOU!! I do remember you and hey man, I'm always happy to help <33

I'm so glad to recruit someone else to my hepatoscopy group because it is a long and storied tradition with many many different types of study and schools of thought dating all the way back to the Sumerians! It's an extremely underrated bit of study when it comes to sketching portraits of divination and prophecy when it comes to adaptations of imaginings of greek myth works - similar to bird augury (which was such a widespread skill that most people had some level of understanding of the basics of what the omens of common birds meant the way people now can look at the clouds over head and know if it'll rain and when approximately that rain'll happen).

It's a great and common misunderstanding that things like prophecy and magic were these fantastic elements that had no tangible features to their practices and while there's nothing wrong with interpreting things as more fantastical for the sake of coolness or aesthetic, I personally think these elements are interesting enough to be worth looking into and portraying!

Also yes, I did write Exeunt 😳I'm very very honoured that you enjoyed my work so much and I'm even more grateful that it could let you see the Apollo in everything 💖 Thank you for reading it!!

[cosmicredcadet]

listen when we say we need aroace rep - we MEAN we need AROACE REP. becuze shock of all shocks, a character being just ACE is not aroace rep! same with a character being just aro is not aroace rep. not all aroace ppl see their aro and ace identities as separate.

I for one, find it difficult to separate my aro and ace identities from each other which is why i am AROACE and not aro and ace. A character being only ace is not representing me. I do not feel represented by only an ace character. they are not even half representing me because my asexuality goes hand in hand with my aromantisism. and Ace character is not half representing aroace people. I'm sorry but i do not relate to the alloace experience because i am not alloace. so a character being only ace is not relatable to me because they are not aroace. the same goes for if a character was only aro or aroallo.

Now before anyone decides to misinterpret this post to hell and back I'm not saying that aroallo or alloace rep is bad or shouldn't exist. I'm saying stop throwing aroace rep under the bus because "Actually we need more just aro/just ace rep" as if that somehow solves the issue of aroace rep being nonexistent.

[reallyhardy]

Sorry what’s up w the Ethan slater stuff? I know him only from your posts / SpongeBob stuff

HI HELLO please buckle in

yep -- the same guy from the spongebob musical, and my posts abut the spongebob musical.

he blew up completely and now the general public knows him as 'ariana grande's new boyfriend' - their relationship seems to have started off the back of co-starring in the upcoming wicked musical film adaptation.

it's just been like. a monkey's paw curling sort of a way for him to get catapulted to fame, as i had always really enjoyed him as a performer (as spongebob, yes, but also in the other roles i'd seen him in,) and my biggest hope back around 2017 was that he would continue in and be really successful in theatre, get a lot of broadway roles, maybe take on some existing parts i thought he'd really suit, like seymour in little shop or ogie in waitress.......... but instead he booked the role of boq from wicked in a massive hollywood film production instead, where he met ariana grande. THE ariana grande.

and then yeah. at some point, he and grande broke up with their respective partners, (slater leaving both his wife AND newborn son) jumped into a new relationship, and now the whole wider internet knows who he is but certainly not for the right reasons.

there's been speculation regarding whether or not grande and slater had cheated on their previous partners before their relationship began with various sources coming out of the woodwork saying "yes they did" and others saying "no they didn't" -- humans are all perfectly capable of making stuff up, the media especially, so i simply don't know who to trust and i admit it had completely shattered my whole good impression of him - PLUS it gave the wider internet an absolutely awful first impression of him, resulting in, yeah, the (frankly, unflattering, sometimes downright cruel) memes of him popping up on twitter and, as i discovered yesterday, in non-theatre youtubers' videos who would literally never have heard of him if not for the slater-grande romance 🥲

FULL COVERAGE of the situation as it was happening can all be found on the lovely @notasimpleslater's blog under the tag 'ozgate' if you want to delve deeper!

[gr8ntaire]

who else up having their heart broken by the Prost documentary, btw,

[tinyevilgremlin]

castaway diva / ep9.

the more i think about this scene of kiho breaking down after the confrontation, the more it breaks me

there had to be some part of him that hoped, however miniscule that hope was, that his father might have changed, even if only a little, throughout those years. that he couldn't possibly have stayed the same violent and bitter man even after all that time, and maybe, just maybe, he wouldn't have to resort to extreme means to keep him away from his family.

but it's crushed the moment he enters the house and the first thing his father does is suspect him, and when his suspicions are confirmed, immediately launches into a violent fit. all the while kiho coils in on himself as he takes the beating— and for those few moments all i could think about was the young kiho, helpless and weak with no one to protect him from the man called his 'father'. a figure who's supposed to protect him and care for him.

what makes it even more heartbreaking is that it is truth in television for most, if not all, cases of abuse. the perpetrators continue with the same mindset, and rarely, if ever, change or show remorse. meanwhile, the victims/survivors are left to deal with the damage for the rest of their lives. even when they reach a better position in life and gain a support system, it continues to haunt them in the present. and it's evident in kiho, as his first instinct upon realising that the father has almost found them, is to take it upon himself to face him, all alone, even though the thought must terrify him. because that's what he learnt to do ever since he was young.

after everything— threats and warnings done, kiho walks to his car in a daze and that's when the futility of it all hits him in full force. watching him try to hold back tears, the bitter smile, as he fails and his body completely gives in to loud sobs was just... nothing could have prepared me for it, even if it was there in the preview. it's such a raw and heavy scene, and the background score only adds to it, along with, of course, the acting.

castaway diva isn't perfect by any means, but some scenes, for example this one, are definitely going to linger with me for a while.

[candlecove-weaintdeadyet]

Something fascinating on the Wiki, re: Poppy and Percy's relationship

I know we all like to joke here about Poppy and his shit treatment of Percy and general lack of redeeming qualities, but I noticed something in the Wiki's episode synopses that kind of surprised me because if you ask the fandom it doesn't add up:

Yeah, in Season 1, Poppy generally treats Percy like garbage (save for the ending of Percy Plays Piano, but there he had an ulterior motive (using Percy as an anti-Horace weapon)), we all know that, but in s1e7 (The New Ship) after Janice calls him out on his bs and he takes the time to think...

well first he does the unthinkable (for an early 70's kids' show, at least) and apologizes to Janice, at least, for his weirdly cagey behavior. And even though neither he nor Percy properly address or even mention their absolute mess of a dynamic, afterwards he seems a fair bit...I guess nicer is the right word, to Percy.

In late Season 1 into Season 2, whenever the two interact (which is a rarer occurrence after that point, I've noticed. Seems Poppy mostly leaves Percy to his own devices for the most part), Poppy is noticeably calmer and more charitable-in The Map and The Key he's willing to humor Percy and his (apparently unwarranted, according to the ending) excitement, he either barely notices or doesn't care that much about Percy's nervousness in A Hole in the Ship when otherwise he'd have snapped at him about it-hell, in a scrapped synopsis for Milo's Race (curse ye, PirateJet, taking all the good plotlines from us!) he states outright that he cares about Percy, and was apparently fully ready to keelhaul Milo for hurting him had the trap chest worked as intended.

We love character development (and hate stupid retcons that get rid of it) in this house.

[monards]

… why are we excessively vilifying one of the characters who are meant to clearly show the concept of humanity being flawed and concept, when it’s clear she’s mentally ill and you guys haven’t done this to literally any other character we’ve met whose been more reliably established as worse… :3

[cathalbravecog]

i'm the antonymph of the internet

[i-dreamed-i-had-a-son]

Broke (2016): BBC Sherlock is a phenomenal piece of media and anything that seems like a flaw just hasn't been fully explored yet

Woke (2020): BBC Sherlock is an incredibly flawed series run by an egotistical writer, it never deserved the hype and is actively bad on so many fronts (especially representation)

Bespoke (2024): BBC Sherlock is flawed and bogged down by increasingly poor writing, which many fans refused to see while it was airing, leading to hugely misplaced expectations (particularly for the final series), AND it has the seeds of some compelling characterizations and portrayals, some genuinely solid performances, and touches--albeit imperfectly--on complexities that are still being discussed today (particularly as it relates to the relationship between Sherlock and John). The huge cultural impact of the show has created a massive pendulum effect in its public perception, leading to most people today remembering a caricature of the show (whether positive or negative) rather than appreciating its nuanced merits and failings...that being said Season 4 sucked